Explaining Military Design Deliverables: Moving from Innovation to Something Operational Planners Can Use to Break Out of Static Repetitions

This is a section from some design educational material the author is developing for a military design and innovation course. All content reflects the opinion of the author and in no way reflects any endorsement or stated position beyond that of this author. Follow me on Twitter, Medium, LinkedIn and Instagram to see more content like this, snapshots of things I am reading and researching, new design news, podcasts, articles, videos, and more.

There are really no exact rules or principles governing how a military design deliverable ought to be. In fact, we know that even across the U.S. and international military partners, there are a wide range of design methodologies coupled with proposed ‘design outputs’ that again are quite varied and unlike one another. Also, we have certain units and leadership that prefer one form of design while others desire yet a different composition. When we consider that design is a process or mindset of being reflective in ‘thinking about our thinking’ while we approach truly complex and adaptive systems, then that implies that what works today for design may catastrophically fail us tomorrow if we attempt to institutionalize it into a standard practice.

If creating new and divergent design is as varied as there are types of cakes, pies and baked goods on this planet, there will not be specific recipes but there will be…